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Marketing Others Small Business Social Media Tips

Clever Blogging Tips All Small Business Owners Need to Know

Blogging is everywhere nowadays, and it seems like every business and individual under the sun is having a go. However, there is a method in the madness since blogging is one of the most effective ways to engage and interact with your users, attracting them to your small business to generate sales.

However, blogging can only be a beneficial as it is done right. Today, we’re going to explore several clever blogging tips for you to remember, allowing you to maximize the success of your blogs and take your online business to the next level.

Make it Relevant to Your Business

Firstly, perhaps the most important element of blogging you need to consider when writing is that the content you’re producing needs to be relevant to your small business.

While some topics may seem relevant, they need to ideally be directly related to the products or services that you’re offering, so the customer can make an easy connection. You have to show how they can benefit from buying and using your products and how it can resolve their problems.

Research Your Competitors

While you may feel bad about checking out your competitor’s content, after all, you wouldn’t want them doing it to you; it’s an essential part of business. How are you supposed to stay one step ahead if you don’t know where they are?

Not only can checking your competition give you ideas for content, but you can also check a tonne of elements, such as what their most popular posts are, how their users are interacting with their content and what sort of keywords they are using. Check it and make content better than your competitors with your ideas.

Focus on Your Target & Purpose

Every single blog post that you upload to your website needs to have a purpose. Without this purpose fresh in your mind for every post that you write, you won’t be able to lead customers in that direction, and the entire post will have been for nothing.

Some of the purposes you could think about include;

  • Inspiration
  • Product information
  • Motivational
  • Business story
  • Customer case study
  • Sign up for a mailing list
  • Follow on social media
  • Offer or promotional education

Your blog is one of the methods of conversation with your potential customers, so lead them to the buying process of your products or services.

Think About Formatting and Accuracy

When it comes to presenting your blog content, you need to make sure that you’re formatting your final piece in such a way that it’s as easy as possible for your reader to consume. As you can see from this article, imagine if there were no subheadings and no broken paragraphs, just one big block of text. Would you be happy to read it all?

One of the most important processes you need to undertake when you’re writing your blogs before you upload them is to check them to ensure they are free from errors and mistakes. If you’ve got spelling errors, misplaced punctuation and bad grammar, this will seriously harm the credibility and reputation of your blogs and people won’t want to read them.

According to study, 59% of people stated that they wouldn’t buy any product or service from the company who has grammar mistakes and errors on their website. Check and proofread your content using tools like Grammarix to be sure your content is perfect to go.

Make sure that you break up your content in small, digestible chunks for easy reading, especially when you consider a vast majority of your readers will be coming to your website through their mobile devices. You can also use tools like Cite It In to add any references, citations and quotes in a professional manner.

How Often Are You Going to Post?

The knack for running a successful blog is being able to post consistently. Ideally, you’ll want to be uploading a post about twice a week, but you can do once a week or even daily, depending on the nature of your small business.

However, any less than once a week and your customers will read a post and then forget about your business. You want to be posting consistently, so your customers always have you in their minds, but not too much that it annoys them by seeing you pop up on their feeds all the time.

Consider the Length of Your Content

It’s easy to want to talk on and on about the subject that you and your small business is interested in. Depending on your blogging platform, writing long-form content may be ideal and what your customers are interested in.

However, if you’re marketing to ‘everyday people’, this can cause problems since the typical person wants easily digestible content that only takes several minutes to read through maximum before they get bored and take their attention elsewhere.

Using tools like Easy Word Count, you can make sure the majority of your content reaches around 800 words, an ideal reading time of five minutes or so.

Always Check for Plagiarism

Plagiarism is one of blogging biggest taboo subjects, and you need to make sure that you’re avoiding it at all costs. While you might not be proactively going out onto the internet to copy other people’s work, it’s possible that you do it accidentally without even realizing which is why it’s so important you check each post.

Having plagiarised content on your blog will mean that Google indexes your page and then removes them from their search engine results pages, and they won’t even notify you. Fortunately, there are many online tools, like Copyscape and Academized that you can use to check your content to ensure it’s 100% original.

Consider Outsourcing

Since you’re trying to run and manage your small business, there may not always be time to write new blogs to the quality that you’re expecting. However, you still need to post. With this in mind, it’s worth remembering that there are many services out there that can help to generate content when you need it.

Sites like Upwork and Paper Fellows are full of writers that you can use to produce content on your behalf, whenever you need them too. Alternatively, if you want to write them yourself, you can use writing guide databases like State of Writing and Via Writing to help you create quick and properly formatted content.

Conclusion
As you can see, blogging is beneficial for your business and can help your potential customers to understand your product or service better. Be sure to use these main tips and you’ll lead your customers to buy from you and use your products to take your small business to the next level.

 

Author Bio:

Brenda Berg is a professional with over 15 years of experience in business management, marketing and entrepreneurship. Consultant and tutor for college students and entrepreneurs at Oxessays. She believes that constant learning is the only way to success. You can visit her personal blog at Letsgoandlearn.com

 

Categories
Content Marketing Social Media Tips

4 Ways to Improve the Visual Aspects of Your Online Presence?

Maybe you haven’t thought about it before, but your online presence is predominantly composed of a series of visuals used in your digital marketing strategy. If you have a podcast or YouTube channel up and running, there also an audio aspect. Anyhow, I dare to say that at least 80 percent of customer and client experiences online start with an engaging visual.

It wasn’t a mere coincidence that content marketing has flourished over the past years. Content marketers have been building their entire strategy on the fact that 90 percent of the information that comes to the brain is visual. Let’s see what you can do to improve the visual aspects of your online presence to delight your customers, improve engagement and conversion rates, and in the end, extend your reach.

Homepage & other website pages

Your official website is a cornerstone of your digital marketing efforts and a point from which you can extend your online presence.

A home page is the first visual aspect of your online presence that your visitors will have face-to-face communication with. And it better be engaging, because in the next few seconds a visitor may as well leave it. So, if you want to make it more engaging, you should incorporate a relevant background image, logo, strong typefaces, short converting message and a call-to-action button.

Since the logo and background image are the most prominent visuals, let’s see how you can get improved versions of the ones you might be already using.

Background Image

The background image is the container of your homepage content. It has to be powerful, engaging and yet not intrusive. Since it adds to aesthetics, you have to use the best photo possible. You can get your hands on a photo taken or designed by a professional photographer or illustrator from the abundance of stock images online.

There are plenty of stock image websites online, so feel free to visit any of them. After you purchase the license, you are free to use it on your website. This method is way more affordable than hiring a professional designer or illustrator to do a custom job for you.

You will be surprised by the number of high-quality images and illustrations on sale. These can also be used to advertise your products, as well as on the other web pages on your website and, as you will see later, in your blog post.

Furthermore, high-quality images can help you to establish credibility among online content consumers. In fact, the quality of visuals is the number one criteria for assessing the credibility of the content and website. In one of the studies of the Stanford Web Credibility project, 46 percent of participants said exactly that.

Logo

The logo is a very important visual aspect, one that serves as a seed that your brand strategy will grow from. A place where visitors expect to see a company logo is in the upper left corner of your website, and that’s exactly where you will see it on most websites.

Now, if you run a small business, you might think that you don’t have the budget to finance a professional custom-tailored logo as they are pricey. But did you know that you can get a fantastic-looking and affordable logo created by a professional logo designer?

About Us

Before engaging in a relationship with a company, consumers like to get to know it. Actually, to be precise, 52% of visitors do. This is what the About Us page is for. To make it more appealing to the visitors and easier to relate to your business, including different forms of media. Why? Because if they have already bothered to visit it, you should reward them with attention-grabbing content.

 

Things worth considering:

 

Individual and team photos – these will help visitors to visualize your company. If you feel like adding some character to your brand, you can include photos of your team in action in-house, as well as shots of you having fun together outside the office.

Videos – a video on this page will help you to convey a powerful message in a matter of seconds for those that can’t be bothered to read.

Blog

Do you know that 38 percent of marketers say that blogging is the most important form of content for their business? Visual marketing comes in a close second with 37 percent, perhaps because articles with visual elements get 94 percent more views than the plain text ones. These facts lead to a simple conclusion: by incorporating visuals in your blog posts, you will increase its engagement potential.

The most common visuals used in the blog posts are photographs, illustrations, memes, and infographics. As I’ve already mentioned, a great source of images and illustrations for your blog are stock images. You should keep in mind that there are few rules to follow when it comes to incorporating these into your content strategy.

The rule of the thumb is consistency. The visuals should be consistent with your overall website design and theme. If you decide to go with illustrations, stick with your decision and try not to diverge from the plan by suddenly mixing them up with photographs. Using the right images from the same art category will help your visitors connect with your brand and this will boost your conversion rates.

The second rule restricts the amount of visual content found in a blog post. The cover image should be found in all of your blog posts. Besides a compelling headline, the cover image is the next thing that should compel the user to click and read the article. Additionally, the cover image should always be relevant to the article theme.

Generally, you should refrain from flooding your articles with images unless they complement the general purpose of your content. For instance, guide articles should contain screenshots or “how to” images, so that readers can visualize the solution and easily follow through.

When it comes to infographics, you should know that they are very powerful visual elements that you should leverage. They present a powerful synergy of data and images, and since people process images much faster than text, they can really engage visitors and make them want to stay until they are done “reading” an infographic.

YouTube Posts

YouTube has become the most popular platform for uploading and sharing video content. There are more than 1.3 billion YouTube users and 50 percent of those who are subscribed to channels would drop whatever they were doing to take a break and watch a new video on the channel they’ve subscribed to.

Becoming active on YouTube will definitely help you to extend your online presence, depending on how much time and money you put into it. Creating compelling videos is not an easy task. It is something that you will have to learn over time and get equipment if you want to appear professional to your audience.

YouTube is much more than sharing your business/product/service promotional video. Don’t forget about the social media aspect of it. Here are few tips on how to use YouTube for your business in order to increase engagement and conversion rates:

  • Start regularly uploading new video content – This is the best way to start boosting your business credibility and visibility. Don’t have any ideas? Post interviews with staff, create series of behind the scene videos, break webinars and webcasts down into episodes, etc.
  • Leverage the video description – Make sure to include your website link in the description below the video and ask viewers to go and check it out if they are interested. Things can start happening if you politely ask the audience to like, subscribe and click the links. The video description should be short (2-3 sentences) and informative. Make sure to stick a keyword or two when you are writing it.
  • Don’t neglect the comment section – This is where you can directly engage in the conversation with your audience. Stay tuned and make sure to use the momentum and respond to the questions. Refrain from posting generic responses. Instead, personalize your interaction.

 

If this sounds like too much, don’t worry, there is an alternative. You can identify the most popular YouTuber in your industry and ask him to make a review video on one of your products or services. This way you will tap into his audience and video producing skills and drive more traffic to your website.

Social Media

In the end, we come to social media marketing. Social media platforms have been used for business promotion for quite some time now. If you are not using visuals in your social media marketing strategy you should definitely start doing it, because competitors are already ahead of you. Actually, 74 percent of social media marketers use visuals in their SMM efforts.

If you are already doing it, don’t get too confident, there is always room for the improvement. Do you share blog post on your social media profile? Make sure to keep at least 20% of your blog posts shared through your official social media profile. It is better if you write a unique post message for each share. And, of course, include the cover image of the article. To spice up your visuals, you can add a portrait photo of the writer.

Infographics are also a viable content option for your posts on social media. They are engaging and can get a lot of shares, thus driving the attention exactly where you need it.

Since social media hits the sweet spot between community interaction and visual presentations, you should organize quizzes and giveaways every once in a while.

If you want to succeed in these efforts you absolutely have to look at visuals as an important asset to your digital marketing campaign. By carefully picking the right visuals to represent the information you want to convey, you will not only increase engagement and conversion but also overall user experience, thus keeping the visitors returning for more.

 

Author Bio:

 

Dereck Gligorijevic is a blogger who is always willing to assist you in making a beautiful online home for your next big adventure!

Categories
Others Pinterest Marketing Social Media Tips

Why You Should Bother Building A Visual Identity on Pinterest!

Are you aware that, according to the 2018 Social Media Statistics, there 200 million monthly active users and 100 billion of Pins being created?The chances of your Pins being seen and clicked is low particularly if you don’t have enough followers, you’re not part of any board groups, and you don’t optimize your Pins for search.

The importance of having a consistent visual branding on Pinterest is in order for your target audience to instantly recognize you in a pile of visuals.

Let me give you a good example.

Aside from using it for work or marketing, I love going to Pinterest to find the usual stuff like outfit ideas, easy-to-do recipes, travel tips, and, of course, quotes.

Here’s an example of what my home page looks like as I am writing this piece:

 

why you should build a visual identity on Pinterest wordporn

Now for you, this may seem like bunch of visuals and you probably can’t even tell who made them. However, for me, there’s one visual (oops make that two) that stands out the most – the one inside the red square.

I can straight away tell that this picture quote is from Word Porn because of three reasons:

 

  1. They always use the same font which is a typewriter font.
  2. They always use the same background which is white.
  3. Their name is always included in the visual.

 

Suppose one day, they stop creating their quotes using one of these three, I think I won’t be able to recognize them. They’ll just be another random quote I see on Pinterest. Now, this is the main point and definition of branding: to make your entire self or company stand out from the others. As defined by Business Dictionary, branding means…

 

Branding

 

Visual Brand Consistency Examples on Pinterest

There are some visuals on Pinterest that whenever I see them, their name instantly pops into my head – with or without logo. You can take inspiration from these ones.

 

  1. Lauren Hooker – Elle & Company

Lauren Hooker

 

Just look at how creative entrepreneur, Lauren Hooker, does her Pinterest game. Not only can you see the similarities of the Pin images she makes, she also used them to create cohesiveness by using them as board image covers.

 

Board Image Covers

 

Lauren is consistent using:

 

  • The same font – a sans serif font
  • The same template which has a small rectangular shape at the bottom

 

If you’ll go to Lauren’s Pinterest page, you’ll see how she uses different colors. Nonetheless, I can recognize that the images are from her because the colors she use are soft and pastel like.

 

  1. My Five Acres

My Five Acres

 

Just like Instagram, Pinterest has a lot of users sharing content about travel and pictures of beautiful places. It’s no brainer, we love seeing photos of different places and country.

With all of the beautiful travel photos and tips I see, My Five Acres stands out the most for me because of how they do their visuals.

My Five Acre

My Five Acres is consistent using:

 

  • The same template (square around the top and small rectangular shape at the bottom)
  • The same type of orange for the shapes
  • Their logo inside the small rectangular at the bottom

 

  1. Polyvore

Polyvore

Ah yes, outfit ideas. One of the reasons why I and most women go to Pinterest is to look for what to wear to a certain event or what should we pair with our newly bought black jeans. There are plenty of style ideas but there’s one page that stands out the most to me, Polyvore. It’s basically how they do their visuals.

If you’re habitually looking for fashion ideas on Pinterest, I know you’ll agree with me.

Polyvore

Polyvore  is consistent using:

 

  • The same template – white background and black text in the middle
  • The same fonts – a combination of serif and sans serif fonts

 

  1. Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner

 

If there’s one thing I see on my homepage every single time that would be marketing tips. I’m pretty sure all of them are helpful but Social Media Examiner’s visuals, with no fail, are the most noticeable to me which I end up clicking.

 

Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner is consistent placing:

 

  • Their URL at the bottom
  • An icon or object at the top that is related to the topic

They may use different colors but you’ll see all of them are kind of vibrant to the eyes. You’ll also notice that they use different fonts.

 

 

  1. PureWow

PureWow

Again, one of the reasons why I and other women go to Pinterest is because there are lots of cooking tips and recipes.

There may be tons of helpful food ideas appearing right before my eyes but PureWow perfectly captured my attention with their Pin images.

why you should build a visual identity on Pinterest Purewow

PureWow is consistent using:

 

  • The same template – white background, showing six pictures, and black text at the top.
  • The same font – a serif font

 

How To Be Visually Consistent on Pinterest

 

  1. Use the ideal image size

banner dimension

The go-to Pin image size is 735 pixels in width and 1128 pixels in height.

But, of course, you are free to creatively use any size you want just like what Polyvore and PureWow do with their Pin blog post recipe images which are longer than usual.

Whatever size you want to use, simply be consistent about it.

 

  1. Use at least 2 branding elements in your visuals

According to visual brand strategist, Orana Velarde, there are four visual brand assets you should be using if you’re dead serious about building a visual brand identity: logo, colors, fonts, and visuals.

 

Visual Brand Access

When you’re making picture quotes or blog covers for Pinterest, use two or all four of your visual assets like clockwork – just like the examples I mentioned earlier.

What if you’re not the only one in your team creating Pin images? How do you keep yourself and the others on the same page?

Fortunately, there’s an exact tool for this. Visme’s Brand Kit allows everyone in your team to have an access to all the visual assets and templates your brand is using.

Visual Brand Identity Tool in Visme

There you have it. Everything you need to know about building a visual identity on Pinterest. Well, almost. Let me know if I missed something.

Either way, I hope I got my point across.

 

AUTHOR BIO:

Belle Balace is a Growth Specialist at Visme, an online visual tool where you can create engaging visuals in less time.
Categories
Social Media Tips

The Perfect Image Size Guide for Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr

Having trouble keeping up with the latest in image size requirements for your favorite social media platform? We feel your pain! Everybody wants to make a good first impression and in visual marketing that means making sure your photos look their best.

This infographic for visual marketers has all the image sizes for three popular social media platforms; Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr. Now you won’t be at a loss when it comes to knowing the correct image size.

Use this infographic to ascertain the basics of image dimensions on different social networks. Keep it handy in case you ever have to work at a moment’s notice.

You’ve worked hard making sure you have the best visuals. Now use this guide to ensure they look good on your favorite platform.

The Perfect Image Size Guide For Pinterest Tumblr and Instagram
Print it. Save it. Share it.

Share this Infographic On Your Blog

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Instagram tips Marketing Others Social Media Tips

Outreach and Marketing Using Instagram Direct

It has been 3 years since the much-awaited feature ‘Instagram Direct’ was released for use. This handy feature, allows a user to share a picture, video, profile or location with an individual or a group of people (maximum 15). It is estimated that nearly 100 million people use this service every month, nearly a fifth of the number of total users per month.

outreach and marketing using instagram direct

This feature offers functionalities similar to those offered by Social Media newcomer Snapchat. The good news for marketers, though, is that it can ease life substantially by providing another platform to improve your outreach and disseminate information.

Ahead, I have presented some tips and tricks to help you employ Instagram Direct for your marketing jobs and needs. A few advantages of using Instagram Direct are

These points make the Instagram Direct feature a very attractive and effective tool for any marketer.

Let’s get into some more ways in which you, as a marketer, can use this feature to the best of its abilities.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner!

Ah! Who doesn’t love a contest! A chance to win and feature on a social channel in front of several people. Oh the adulation! It is basic human instinct and slight greed that makes a competition so attractive and popular. A marketer’s job is to give the customer what he wants, and adhering to that policy, contests should be held regularly.

One of the biggest advantages of holding a contest is the outreach and exposure your brand can get. Customers subconsciously remember the brand organizing the contest they enter, especially if they win. It is a win-win situation for both the marketers and the customers.

Word of mouth subsequently spreads the brand name even more and makes the advertising job of the brand or product much easier. Instagram Direct is the perfect medium for connecting with your customers, individually or in a group.

Let me give you an example of how you can connect with your customers and engage them in your contests using Instagram Direct. You can send an image of a product to a select few and ask the user to think of a tagline for that product. The best 10 taglines will get that product for free!

contest

Alternatively, you can hold public contests, in which say, the first 10 commenters for a picture each day, will get entry into a lucky draw. If you are able to, ask customers to post pictures which include your product and special hashtags. The best pictures will be judged its owner will be awarded a prize. You can even use the photos further for a marketing campaign or just to show customer involvement on your Instagram page.

For Your Eyes Only

Customers love it when exclusive products are released. Limited edition products sell almost instantly and satiate the customer’s hunger for new products. Everyone wants something unique. This makes our work easier. Just make sure that when you release such products, you advertise them judiciously since over-advertisement decreases their appeal.

Instagram Direct is perfect for such purposes. You can use it to contact an individual or a small group of people, maximum of 15. Give users a sense of exclusivity and make them feel special. Sneak peeks to the latest product might be just the thing you might be missing.

Before launching the product in the market, send a sneak-peek to around 100 customers. These customers will feel valued and special. Word of mouth has been known to be the best form of spreading information and guarantees a high conversion rate. Organic recommendations lead to many more sales and brand reach, without the hard work.

Choose the users carefully and send them just a sneak peek, make sure that they will be interested to know more. Don’t mention too many details about the product, which can bore a user. Send an attractive image with a catchy tagline and a link to the product page. Your users will surely want to know more.

Word of mouth is probably the biggest weapon you have in your arsenal. Your product will spread like wildfire if you have targeted the right users. When sending a sneak peek always provide a link to the product page in case a user wants to know more.

Listen To Your Customers

The attribute provides a user-friendly dais for identifying your network on a personal level and creating conversations about the brand, owing to the comments that are visible to everyone included in the direct message. You can always take a list of users to choose between two products that are featured in a picture or as for their feedback on the product line.

When a customer gives feedback asked by you in an exclusive way, it provides him/her a sense of appreciation and a sense of value which is a priceless asset for any brand.

customer service

Going through user profiles can also be beneficial. Search for hashtags related to your products or brand and spot users who have bought a product recently. You can thank them or communicate with them directly using Instagram Direct. This will really make the user feel special, improving your reputation as a brand.

Treat Your Loyal Followers

The most important aspect of marketing is to make the customer feel loved and serviced. Your brand updates and offers must be presented to your customers and loyal followers first

A simple way of identifying the low hanging fruit, or spotting the followers who have supported you regularly, is by using the popular website simply measured.

simply measured

This website offers great features related to the analytics of your social media accounts. It tells you about the followers who post your content, like your content or comment on your content regularly. It gives you a good idea of your most loyal followers and also provides additional information such as what time you should post your pictures and which location has the most active users.

Use these metrics to identify your die-hard followers and then communicate with them through Instagram Direct. Offer coupons and special offers to show your gratitude and thank the follower.

Small steps like these can be extremely beneficial in the future and ensure that your followers and fans feel loved and appreciated.

Check Out The Competition

A useful resource for understanding what your customers want is your competitor’s page. Browse through your competitor’s posts and search for users who are active and communicative. Also, judge the popularity of posts and determine what works.

Instagram Direct also allows you to send messages to users who are not following you. Try approaching new users via Instagram Direct and offer them an alternative to your competition.

More users, especially active ones, guarantee more engagement, activity and eventually sales.

Where You At?!

Location services on Instagram have totally changed the landscape. Sharing locations on Instagram is gaining more popularity day by day and has increased the effectiveness of posts.

location

A good example of how you can use locations to gather more interest and increase your exposure.

Images with locations receive more engagement than those without locations. This is because a person relates to a location more easily than he or she relates to a hashtag or a product.

location important

Users can search for images close to their geographic location and can add locations to any image. Adding a location gives your image another dimension of appeal to involve your audience.

So adding locations to Direct messages can also be very effective and efficient in involving your audience.

Use the tips mentioned above to make full use of Instagram Direct. This feature has a lot of potential, especially for marketers, and if you’re not already using it, you could be missing out on possibly 100s of followers. Just make sure not to over-message and annoy your audience.

The biggest advantage of using Instagram Direct is that it allows you to communicate with an individual user and also allows you to connect with a group of users and start a discussion.

Get with the times and start using Instagram Direct.